An acquisition and an auction drove the bulk of investment activity last week. Of the venture back moves, alternative lending and electronification of documents paved the way.
The Big Takeaways for Payments and Commerce
- $5.7 Billion in financial activity was observed across a variety of investment types – VC funding, private placements, etc. Of that total, $334 Million was driven by strategic or venture –backed investments. The biggest transaction was an auction for Catalunya Banc Mortgages won by Blackstone for $4.8 Billion. The second was the acquisition of Evolution1 by WEX for $532 Million.
- Not surprisingly, 90 percent of the week’s activity was concentrated on the retail payments side and most of it was related to the previously mentioned auction. On the commercial payments side Evolution1 acquisition was the biggest move.
- Venture backed and strategic investments on the retail payments side accounted for $298M of the total investment activity in the third week of July. Of that, almost all was venture.
- Interestingly, most of the venture and strategic backed investments were in the payments and banking areas accounting for 69 percent of the total. POS systems ($8 Million), digital wallets ($5 Million), authentication/biometrics ($ -) and prepaid ($-) reflected the least amount of investment activity.
- The most active VCs included Index Ventures ($65 Million), The European Investment Fund ($30 Million) and Blumberg Capital ($24 Million).
- From a geographic perspective Europe was the most active region followed by US.
- The median investment amount was $12.5 Million.
The Retail and Commercial Payments Top 20
Here are the top 20 investments that drove 99 percent of the funding activity in the third week of July 2014.
